


Homesickness (Whumptober 2020)

by twofrontteethstillcrooked



Series: Whumptober [3]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, snippetfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:21:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27072655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked/pseuds/twofrontteethstillcrooked
Summary: He cleared his throat lightly before speaking. “Is something wrong?""No,” Silver lied into his pillow.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver
Series: Whumptober [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1975861
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53





	Homesickness (Whumptober 2020)

The old wooden bed was plenty sturdy: it had been put through its paces often enough there was no doubt of its resilience. Still, the way it creaked like a splintering shinbone the sixth time Silver twisted over made Flint give up trying to sleep.

He cleared his throat lightly before speaking. “Is something wrong?" 

"No,” Silver lied into his pillow.

“You sure?”

“Yes." 

As grouchy as Silver sounded, Flint wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about talking him out of his opinion on the situation. Let him be randomly annoyed, Flint thought. Not everything is within your power to remedy. As soon as he thought it, he felt impatient with his own churlishness. Hadn’t things been better of late? Hadn’t both of them, improbable though it seemed, found a measure of peace under the same roof, in the same bed?

He turned over and began to scoot up behind Silver until they were aligned. He draped his arm over Silver’s waist, pleased Silver hadn’t moved away. The warmth at the juncture of Silver’s shoulder and neck were too tempting to resist. Flint pressed his face there and inhaled as quietly as he could, savouring the oak leaf scent Silver’s hair carried in autumn.

"Tell me what’s wrong.” Not all of Flint’s commands were soft; this one was.

Silver kept his silence for a minute, content to worry at Flint’s wrist with one hand. Flint was preparing for another lie when Silver said, “I just miss it sometimes, is all.”

“What’s that then?”

“Everything.” Silver paused. “From before. All of it. Her.” Before Flint could console him about Madi and say with conviction how they would see her again, and soon, Silver said, “Wasn’t right, the way she sank there at the end." 

Flint blinked into Silver’s shoulder. "We had a letter from Madi last week.”

“The ship, I meant,” Silver said, sounding irritable. “The Walrus.”

And oh holy hell, was that a topic Flint did not wish to discuss at two o'clock in the morning. A hundred memories tore at him like the bony fingers of violent spectres: to think about the Walrus and her crew was to conjure up the emotional equivalent of a rusted cage swinging in a salt breeze, the corpse inside rotted skeletal.

“I didn’t think you so fond of…then,” he was able to say.

“Oh, it was terrible in many, many ways,” Silver agreed. He laced his fingers through Flint’s. “But she was a fine old workhorse of a ship, was she not. And the men…” Here he trailed off, voice rough.

Intolerable, Flint thought. That he lived, that Silver lived, that they had found each other again and were together through another long dark night. Their existence forgave nothing, paid no debt; in this world or the next, there would be recompense, likely brutal. Or: a vast nothingness, death stretched out as infinite as the sea. He waited for it daily as one looked to the unceasing movement of the sun and moon in the heavens.

For now, though, he breathed and felt Silver’s breaths match his own. The bed, for another few hours, would bear them without further complaint, however undeserved the safety.


End file.
